“Can we just come to an agreement?” At a press conference in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on the sidelines of a regional summit, the Russian president said on Friday that he was “ready” to find a compromise to end the conflict in Ukraine, launched by Moscow on February 24.
“How can we reach an agreement?” the master of the Kremlin pretended to ask himself. “What are the guarantees? That is the question,” he added.
“We are open”
Vladimir Putin, who had already admitted a few days before that the conflict was long, concedes that “in the end we will have to agree” to end the conflict.
I have already said many times that we are ready for these arrangements, we are open, but it forces us to think about who we are dealing with,” he said.
The Russian president reacted to Angela Merkel’s recent comments. The former German chancellor believes that the 2014 Minsk agreement between Moscow and Kiev, signed under the auspices of the OSCE, gave Ukraine time to strengthen itself in the event of an armed conflict with Russia.
“The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time. It took advantage of it, as we see today. The Ukraine of 2014/2015 is not the Ukraine of today (…) As we saw at the beginning of 2015, Putin could have easily crushed at the time,” he told the newspaper. Die Zeit.
Vladimir Putin said he was “disappointed” by these comments. “That obviously raises the question of trust. And trust is almost at zero and after such statements,” he said.
“Maybe we should have started all this earlier (the offensive in Ukraine). But actually we were counting on the possibility of finding an agreement within the framework of the Minsk agreements,” he added.
Source: BFM TV
